Remote measurement of blast wave propagation
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army
InventorsCatherine S Stephens, Clifford E Grey, Roland Fuentes, Larry Watkins
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The method and system disclosed herein allow pressure profile data to be collected remotely from multiple autonomous sensors without entering the blast radius. The system obtains a GPS synchronized time value for detonation and obtains subsequent synchronized pressure data sets overtime from multiple independently functioning remote and correlates that data from each transducer with the initial detonation event.
Claims7
A distributed Autonomous Pressure Profile Recorder (APPR) system for measuring multiple blast measurements from various locations, which is a distributed computer system comprised of:
- a master sensing unit with a recorder which records a sensed detonation signal including a sensed detonation time T0 when a circuit breaks in response to a detonation, said master sensing unit being highly synchronized to within less than a thousandth of a second to an external GPS signal wherein said external GPS signal is a pulse per second electrical signal that has a width of less than one second and accurately repeats once per second;
- a plurality of APPR apparatuses placed varying distances from a blast source, each comprised of:
- a pressure transducer, wherein said pressure transducer is configured to output pressure reading P, said pressure reading P sampled at time T1 . . . n to produce P1 . . . n;
- a recording component;
- a processor which compares P1 . . . n to a threshold value and activates said recording component when P1 . . . n exceeds said threshold value;
- a pressure profile data structure which stores time values T1 . . . n for each P1 . . . n larger than said threshold value;
- and
- a clock which is synchronized to said external GPS signal and an APPR memory component for storing said pressure profile data structure for each of said plurality of APPR apparatuses;
- and
- an external computer having a memory which stores data from said plurality of APPR apparatuses and data from said master sensing unit and wherein said external computer receives APPR data packets and correlates each of said APPR data packets with said sensed detonation time T0 to complete a blast profile data structure containing time values, pressure values, and GPS coordinates from each of the plurality of APPR apparatuses.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.